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To: Gravesend Council

Allow Blue badge parking for disabled users of Pathways Day Centre by St Georges Church.

Allow Blue badge parking for collection and pickup for users of Pathways Day Centre by St Georges Church.

Why is this important?

My disabled son, a wheel chair user, attends the Pathways day centre by St George's church in Gravesend. My wife collected our son from Pathways Thursday afternoon, 14 Feb in order to take our son to his Hydrotherapy session at Cotton Lane, Dartford.
Jill, Andrew's mum, parked in St George's yard with our son's disabled blue badge clearly displayed, but was issued with a parking ticket.
No obstruction was being caused so why the ticket?
The warden came out with the usual comment,"I have issued the ticket. there is nothing I can do.
There are free disabled parking places in the car park opposite St Georges Church, But usually there are no parking spaces available, and non-blue badge holders use the disabled bays. but we are, in any case, unable to use the car park with a wheel chair.
Trying to cross from the car park back to St George's church pushing a wheel chair is extremely dangerous.
There are ramps for wheel chairs on each side of the road, but they have been very poorly designed.
The angles they are at are very steep and the wheelchair can get jammed in the road as you try to push the wheel chair on to the incline. Another problem is the pavement does not blend smoothly in to the road and means you have to have several attempts to get out of the road and on to the pavement.
We have had several near misses with cars speeding around the bend to access St George's ctr car park, and decided our only safe option was to park at the entrance to St Georges, and push our son in his wheelchair up through the graveyard by the Pocahontas statue.
Gravesend council should sort out the disabled facilities for people using Pathways Centre.
Pathways is using what was the old Gravesend tourist office and has been in the place for 14 months.
What was Gravesend council thinking of when they agreed to Pathways taking over the premises, but providing no suitable parking facilities for carers to deliver and collect their children from Pathways.
Perhaps Gravesend's traffic wardens need some training, including practical demonstrations of how to get a wheel chair containing an adult from the lower car park to Pathways, especially when the people doing the pushing, in all weathers, are not very healthy pensioners......

Best regards,

Malcolm Jackson,
Andrew Jackson's dad.

Gravesend, Kent

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Updates

2019-02-25 11:50:28 +0000

25 signatures reached

2019-02-24 14:40:29 +0000

10 signatures reached